


Unhealthy Curiosity

by nanuk_dain



Series: Drift Compatible [14]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Team Hot Dads, beware of Newton's mind XD, sneaky Newton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2625110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanuk_dain/pseuds/nanuk_dain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton Geiszler has always been a curious person. He also often tends to stick his nose in things he shouldn't have. Marshal Pentecost's private life is one of those things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unhealthy Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MeganMoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeganMoonlight/gifts).



> In come Newton and Hermann, because I couldn't resist them - Newt is so much fun to write, and there will be more for them in the future. I hope you like my take on them and I would LOVE to hear what you think. Life without comments is very sad for an author, so please feed me ^__^
> 
> This fic is for my dear MeganMoonlight who wanted to read Newt and Hermann in this series. Here we go, hon, I hope you're happy with it ^^

_Hong Kong Shatterdome, May 2023_

 

"I'd like both of your reports on my desk by tomorrow morning, gentlemen." Marshal Pentecost says in that typical commanding yet serene tone of his, and Newton barely resists the urge to give a fake salute. He knows the Marshall doesn't appreciate his mockery of all things military, though, so he doesn't. 

Instead he watches Pentecost and Hansen walk out of the lab, their steps in perfect sync. Not only their steps, actually, their entire _being_ seems to be in sync - from their movements to the way they don't need to talk to have an entire conversation. At the very beginning, when he first saw those two together - must have been a few years ago - Newt thought it was freaky. Now he can't help coming to another conclusion.

"Do you think they're doing it?" Newt asks and makes an unmistakable gesture with his hands, addressing Hermann who is standing next to him - on his side of the lab, of course.

"Newton!" Hermann sounds so scandalised that Newt is tempted to go into more detail. "What the Marshal and Ranger Hansen do in their private life is _none_ of your business."

"Still. I always wondered." Newt shrugs and returns to his side of the lab where a Kaiju liver is sitting on the examination table, dutifully waiting for him. "They have that special kind of chemistry, you know."

"Really, Newton, don't you have enough work to do so that you busy yourself with gossip instead?" Hermann's mouth pulls down in a remarkably disgusted fashion. Newton has never seen anybody else performing that expression to quite that perfection. 

"Oh, it's gossip? Tell me all about it!" Newton beams at him, well aware that it will annoy him beyond reason.

Hermann rolls his eyes because he realises that he gave Newton even more ammunition. "I will not repeat gossip about the Marshal's private life for you."

"Oh come on! Please!" Newton isn't ashamed to beg. He loves a good piece of juicy gossip to spice up his rather unsocial lab life. Hermann doesn't count as social contact, he's practically part of the furniture.

"No, Newton. I - contrary to you - have principles and a code of honour I live by, and I will not undermine them for your sensationalism." Hermann's nose is so high that Newton wonders how he manages to see what's right in front of him. Well, maybe he doesn't - that would explain a thing or two.

"Code of honour? Really, man?" Newton snorts. "I hate to tell you, but you don't interact with people enough to actually need a code of honour." 

"You do not honestly think that insults will make me tell you anything, do you?" Hermann raises an eyebrow, and Newt can't quite decide whether it's arrogance, disdain or a challenge. "I will not stoop to your level, Newton."

He turns on his heel and stalks off to his side of the lab, and now that's definitely arrogance there. Newton just grins. He has a mission now: to explore strange behaviours, to seek out new information and hidden secrets, to boldly research what no man has researched before - the mysterious relationship of Marshal Stacker Pentecost and Ranger Hercules Hansen.

It becomes kind of an obsession remarkably quickly. Well, side obsession, really, he's still quite busy with that teeny tiny Kaiju thing going on in the world. Newton observes Pentecost and Hansen whenever he can, like any good scientist would, and analyses the so acquired information. He wonders if he could ask his test subjects to carry out some experiments for him, but he's quite sure the Marshal would eat him alive and Ranger Hansen would kick his sorry ass into the Breach. Without a Jaeger. So he refrains from asking.

That doesn't mean that Newton doesn't have ways to get what he wants. When there's a quiet night in the lab with Hermann actually absent for once, Newton searches Pentecost's and Hansen's files. There's a lot he has access to since he's the lead scientist for biology, but their Ranger files are sealed. It's not enough to keep him from looking at them, though. He was always good with computers, too. Hacking is in his blood, so to speak. 

Of course he only dares to go for it because Hermann is not there. Because Herm is the only one good enough in coding to understand from one tiny glance at Newt's screen what he's doing. He's probably even better at it then Newt - not that he would _ever_ tell Hermann that - but his 'principles' and his 'code of honour' (Newton can't help making air quotes here) would most likely make him stop Newt, and Newton can't have that. He's too curious to let it go now.

What he discovers once he cracks the firewall ("Really? My mother could do better than that!") is more surprising than it probably should be. He learns not only that Pentecost and Hansen jockeyed together in the Mark I Glory Days and therefore are drift compatible, he also finds out from a side note by Caitlin Lightcap from 2016 that they're a perfect match, only the second one she came across. Now _that_ is interesting.

When he keeps reading he comes to the medical data and he stops dumbfounded when he reads that Pentecost has terminal cancer. And has had it since 2016 - so much for 'terminal'. The man has more resilience than a cat has lives. The same file also informs him that Pentecost can never engage in a drift again - meaning that he can never pilot a Jaeger again - without his brain getting fried, due to the neural overload he experienced from driving solo for three hours. Which is an amazing feat, really, and Newt admires that. It's badass. 

Out of the blue a thought crosses his mind. Pentecost and Hansen must terribly miss it, the drifting. Newt has only heard about it, well, and read all he could get his hands on, but there are so very few perfect matches out there that no serious studies have ever been conducted. In lore the perfect match among Rangers gets upgraded to a soul bond, destined to happen. Newt knows from insider information - did he mention he's good at hacking stuff? - that that's bullshit, please excuse the choice of words. 

Being a perfect match just means that two people are naturally extremely compatible, a bit as if they're connected even without the neural handshake. But it's not like they're soul-bonded. That belongs into the various fantasy worlds he likes to indulge in (and he loves them very much, so that's certainly not a criticism). Now, the drift would make that connection even stronger, to the point that the pilots act as one entity. Doesn't mean they don't keep their separate identities, though, just that they're in such perfect sync that you can't tell them apart anymore. Of course that makes almost invincible Jaeger pilot teams.

Pentecost's cancer explains why he's not in a Jaeger anymore although he's part of a perfect match which the PPDC has always valued highly. To Newt's knowledge there are only three other perfect matches, but he can only remember the Kaidanovskys from Russia right now. And man, they're seriously badass. No wonder no Kaiju ever managed to breach the Siberian Wall.

Newt reads through their entire medical files, because hey, he's a scientist. He needs all available information in order to be able to consider all the angles. There's nothing spectacular in Hansen's files. He's your typical soldier - some old, long healed injuries of varying severity, but generally very fit and healthy due to the exercise-heavy lifestyle and a balanced diet. No damage to the brain caused by the neural handshake, but he sports circuitry burn scars all over his body from to several cases of overloads of the Jaegers' system. The single events are listed in chronological order, and Newton suddenly realises that he's looking at the file of one of the longest active Jaeger pilots on the planet. Heck, the guy jockeyed at least one Jaeger of every mark series, and that's quite the achievement.

Pentecost's case is quite different. He too follows the stereotype of the soldier with the old injuries and the exercise-heavy lifestyle and a balanced diet, but he's far from healthy. He may be fit because he keeps up exercising, but the cancer is slowly eating him from the inside. He's on heavy medication to keep the cancer from spreading, but it's obvious that it's just a way to delay the inevitable. It saddens Newton because Pentecost may be a tough son of a bitch, but he's a good commander. He takes Newton seriously - most of the times - and Newt certainly doesn't take that for granted from a military man. 

When he gets to the brain scans, Newton frowns and takes a closer look. What he sees shouldn't even be possible given that the man still behaves like a normal human being (mostly, that is). Of course there was damage to be expected from a three hour solo drive of a Jaeger, but this makes him look like a broccoli - which he's definitely not. Newton takes his time to study the images and the accompanying reports, but he comes to the same conclusion - the Marshal is in a way better condition than his brain scans indicate. But it's also obvious why he can never engage in a drift again - any additional neural load would tip the scale once and for all.

Now, Hansen and Pentecost can't drift anymore since Tokyo, because 1.) the nuclear reactor would do no good for Pentecost's cancer, and 2.) because the neural load of a drift would deep-fry the Marshal's brain, especially if there's the additional load of a Jaeger in the middle. Newt has the crazy idea that he could try to create a Pons system outside of a Jaeger, away from the reactor *and* without the additional load of the control system. There would be no other purpose than connecting the minds of two people. Basically like Caitlin Lightcap's first Pons system, just that in her case the goal had always been to link man and machine. She never focussed on connecting just two people with no machine involved, and Newt has never heard of it being done before. Even a simulator brings in the load of a Jaeger, because it has the purpose to test if the pilots can take it.

Now there will have to be specifications to make a Pons work for Pentecost and Hansen because of the special situation they're in, on top of being a perfect match. That will also influence their connection - Newt needs information on how the link between a perfect match differs from the link of two people who're merely compatible. Of course Newt would not want his invention - if he ever manages to make it work, that is - to be known on a large scale, he can see the dangers of such a system right away. But he's sure Pentecost and Hansen would give anything - well, maybe not anything, but a lot - to be able to drift together again without taking any unnecessary risks. It must be hard not to drift with your perfect match _for years_.

It's very late - or very early, that depends on your point of view - when Newton powers down the computer and leaves the lab to get a few hours of sleep in his quarters. He can't quite shut off the thoughts running wild in his mind about Pentecost and Hansen, though. All the new information he acquired do not really help him to answer his initial question: Are they doing it? Are they an item? Because he can't quite imagine that Pentecost would do fuck buddies, that seems so... out of character for him. Too much fun, not serious enough. So the question has to be: Are they together, a couple, lovers, partners or whatever you want to call it?

Newton is lying in his bed and almost asleep when he decides he has to do more research. He _will_ find it out.

He's back in the lab by nine o'clock, and of course Hermann is already there, standing on his old-fashioned ladder and writing on one of the equally old-fashioned blackboards - with chalk! Honest to god chalk! Where does he even find that stuff anymore? Hermann barely reacts to Newton's hearty 'Good Morning, Herm!' and keeps mumbling numbers under his breath. 

Newton boots his computer and is very happy to find a message in his inbox telling him that the Kaiju kidney he requested has reached Hong Kong and is waiting for him to come and collect it. It reminds him of yesterday's 'exploration trip' into the medical files of Hansen and Pentecost. He really wants to find out if his idea of the two-people-drift is possible for somebody with a brain as damaged as Pentecost's - strictly neurally speaking, because there's nothing damaged with the guy when he's talking or walking or making decisions or kicking Newt's ass. Without the brain scans and the reports, Newton would never have guessed there was any damage at all. But the data doesn't lie.

Well, it's just a thought, an idea, really, and he has no time for it now, anyway. There is a Kaiju specimen waiting for him to study. And he hasn't scandalised Hermann at all yet - it's the daily goal to do it at least five times, and Newt has yet to fail it.


End file.
